David Talbot - MIT Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/stream/22446/?sort=recent
enMegascale Desalinationhttp://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megascale-desalination/
<p>The world’s largest and cheapest reverse-osmosis desalination plant is up and running in Israel.<br /><br />Availability: now</p>
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<h3>Breakthrough</h3>
<p>Demonstrating that seawater desalination can cost-effectively provide a substantial portion of a nation’s water supply.</p>
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<h3>Why It Matters</h3>
<p>The world’s supplies of fresh water are inadequate to meet the needs of a growing population.</p>
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<h3>Key Players</h3>
<ul><li>IDE Technologies
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<li>Poseidon Water
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<li>Desalitech
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<li>Evoqua
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<p class="dropcap">On a Mediterranean beach 10 miles south of Tel Aviv, Israel, a vast new industrial facility hums around the clock. It is the world’s largest modern seawater desalination plant, providing 20 percent of the water consumed by the country’s households. Built for the Israeli government by Israel Desalination Enterprises, or IDE Technologies, at a cost of around $500 million, it uses a conventional desalination technology called reverse osmosis (RO). Thanks to a series of engineering and materials advances, however, it produces clean water from the sea cheaply and at a scale never before achieved.</p>
<p>Worldwide, some 700 million people don’t have access to enough clean water. In 10 years the number is expected to explode to 1.8 billion. In many places, squeezing fresh water from the ocean might be the only viable way to increase the supply.</p>
<p>The new plant in Israel, called Sorek, was finished in late 2013 but is just now ramping up to its full capacity; it will produce 627,000 cubic meters of water daily, providing evidence that such large desalination facilities are practical. Indeed, desalinated seawater is now a mainstay of the Israeli water supply. Whereas in 2004 the country relied entirely on groundwater and rain, it now has four seawater desalination plants running; Sorek is the largest. Those plants account for 40 percent of Israel’s water supply. By 2016, when additional plants will be running, some 50 percent of the country’s water is expected to come from desalination.</p>
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<p id="desal_lg"><a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/desalinationx950.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/desalinationx519.jpg" alt="" width="" height="" hspace="15" vspace="15" /></a></p>
<p>The traditional criticism of reverse-osmosis technology is that it costs too much. The process uses a great deal of energy to force salt water against polymer membranes that have pores small enough to let fresh water through while holding salt ions back. However, Sorek will profitably sell water to the Israeli water authority for 58 U.S. cents per cubic meter (1,000 liters, or about what one person in Israel uses per week), which is a lower price than today’s conventional desalination plants can manage. What’s more, its energy consumption is among the lowest in the world for large-scale desalination plants.
</p><p>The Sorek plant incorporates a number of engineering improvements that make it more efficient than previous RO facilities. It is the first large desalination plant to use pressure tubes that are 16 inches in diameter rather than eight inches. The payoff is that it needs only a fourth as much piping and other hardware, slashing costs. The plant also has highly efficient pumps and energy recovery devices. “This is indeed the cheapest water from seawater desalination produced in the world,” says Raphael Semiat, a chemical engineer and desalination expert at the Israel Institute of Technology, or Technion, in Haifa. “We don’t have to fight over water, like we did in the past.” Australia, Singapore, and several countries in the Persian Gulf are already heavy users of seawater desalination, and California is also starting to embrace the technology (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalination-out-of-desperation/" target="0">Desalination Out of Desperation</a>”). Smaller-scale RO technologies that are energy-efficient and relatively cheap could also be deployed widely in regions with particularly acute water problems—even far from the sea, where brackish underground water could be tapped. </p><p>
Earlier in development are advanced membranes made of atom-thick sheets of carbon, which hold the promise of further cutting the energy needs of desalination plants.
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—<i>David Talbot</i></p>Wed, 18 Feb 2015 05:05:01 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megascale-desalination/Q&A: Steven Chuhttp://www.technologyreview.com/qa/534856/qa-steven-chu/
<p>The former energy secretary, who has begun chasing emerging technologies again, looks back on his successes and failures in government.</p>
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<p >Steven Chu</p>
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<p>As a leading and active scientist, <a href="http://www.energy.gov/organization/dr_steven_chu.htm" target="_blank">Steven Chu</a> broke the mold when he became energy secretary of the United States in 2009. In his four years of service, he made the Department of Energy more innovative, launching the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy to support projects not yet ready for private investment. He also created Innovation Hubs to bring people from different disciplines together on energy problems and rejuvenated funding for solar research. Chu, who shared the <a href="http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1997/illpres/index.html" target="_blank">1997 Nobel Prize in physics</a> and directed the <a href="http://www.lbl.gov/" target="_blank">Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory</a><span> before his government appointment, is now restarting his research group at Stanford. In a conversation with David Talbot, chief correspondent of <em>MIT Technology Review</em>, he reflected on his time with the federal government and talked about the research and technology questions absorbing him today.</span></p>
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<p><strong>What left you the most frustrated or disappointed at the Department of Energy?</strong></p>
<p>The press was sometimes frustrating to deal with. Often, reporters or their editors wanted to “make news” by generating controversy.</p>
<p>Inside the department, there was inertia to keep old programs unchanged, and friction against new approaches. For example, in research in biofuels, I wanted to cast a wide net for new ideas, but I was getting resistance against doing new research that didn’t fit existing definitions of fuels listed by the Department of Agriculture. I wanted new ideas to be funded on the merits, and worry about categorization later.</p>
<p><strong>What do you see as your biggest success and your biggest mistake?</strong></p>
<p>My biggest success is that I was able to help recruit very capable scientists and engineers. Also, as a practicing scientist—during late nights or weekends—I was in a better position to ask the right questions. Perhaps my biggest mistake was to defer too much to “experts” on nonscientific matters at the beginning of my tenure. This was especially true if the advice was coming from handwringers who were more worried about negative reactions than doing the right thing.</p>
<p><strong>What should President Obama try to get done on energy in his final two years?</strong></p>
<p>President Obama, through the EPA, is doing the right thing by pushing on mercury, particulate matter, and carbon dioxide standards for all power plants above a certain size. I would like to have him begin a dialogue on policies for countries that have a meaningful price on carbon or are working to be less carbon-intensive in each particular industry.</p>
<p>For example, the carbon emission from the production of a particular grade of steel varies greatly. We need to think of how to prevent manufacturing and extraction industries from constantly migrating to the lowest-cost, most polluting producer. China is working hard to reduce the carbon intensity of its industries and is likely to put a price on carbon. I believe China and the U.S. can be leaders in starting this dialogue.</p>
<p><strong>What projects excite you now?</strong></p>
<p>After I left DOE, many companies asked me to join their boards of directors. I chose very few, including Amprius [a Stanford startup working on lithium-ion batteries]. Professor Yi Cui [<a href="http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?trid=117" target="_blank">a 2004 member</a> of <em>MIT Technology Review</em>’s Innovators Under 35] and I brainstormed about new approaches to lithium-metal-anode batteries. We’ve published a couple of papers on new approaches. It’s long been known that a lithium-metal–sulfur-cathode battery can potentially have five times higher energy density. We also seek a durable battery that can charge 10 times faster. Of course, as in all research, we may or may not succeed, but I think we have a shot.</p>
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<p><strong>You’re also on the board of a Canadian startup called Inventys. Why?</strong></p>
<p>I’m trying to help with some of the more technical aspects of capturing carbon from a natural-gas power plant—but also a coal, steel, or cement plant. Currently conventional methods that use amines [chemicals that absorb and then release carbon dioxide at different temperatures] are too expensive. We’re hoping to reduce capture costs to $15 a ton for carbon dioxide; current technologies, when scaled, would cost around $60. Getting to $15 would make carbon capture feasible in the U.S. and China.</p>
<p><strong>What’s the fundamental physics breakthrough you’d most like to see? </strong></p>
<p>Breakthroughs, by definition, are <em>unanticipated</em> surprises that lead to great things.</p>Mon, 09 Feb 2015 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/534856/qa-steven-chu/Smartphone Test for HIV and Syphilis Costs Pennieshttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/534716/smartphone-test-for-hiv-and-syphilis-costs-pennies/
<p>A phone attachment using cheap disposable cartridges rapidly tests for HIV and syphilis in a Rwandan trial.</p>
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<p >A smartphone attachment with a microfluidic mixing chamber connects to a smartphone’s audio jack for power.</p>
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<p>In a small trial in Rwanda, a $34 smartphone attachment rapidly and accurately detected the presence of HIV and syphilis antibodies in drops of blood taken from pregnant women. The work, described in a <a href="http://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaa0056" target="0">paper</a> published today in the journal <em>Science Translational Medicine</em>, demonstrates that laboratory-quality diagnostics can be run on a pocket-sized device that works well in field conditions.</p>
<p>The plastic attachment, about the size of the phone itself, uses disposable cartridges costing just pennies. A health-care worker loads a blood sample, which mixes with chemicals called reagents in microscale channels within the cartridge.</p>
<p>Gold nanoparticles bind to antibodies, and silver nanoparticles form a film around the gold particles. This silver film blocks light shined through the finished sample, indicating the test result within 15 minutes. The result is automatically loaded into the phone’s storage.</p>
<p>The test replicates antibody-based tests known as ELISA but does not require expensive lab equipment. In the study, which involved 96 people, the accuracy was almost as good as it is with ELISA, says <a href="http://bme.columbia.edu/samuel-k-sia" target="_blank">Samuel Sia</a>, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia, who led the work.</p>
<p>Several groups are working on similar microfluidic-chip technologies. A decade ago, Sia founded a startup, Claros Diagnostics—later sold to OPKO Health of Miami—to market a version of his system for prostate ­cancer tests (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/418248/prostate-cancer-results-while-you-wait/" target="0">Prostate Cancer Results While You Wait</a>” and “<a href="http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?trid=962" target="0">Innovators Under 35: Samuel Sia</a>”).</p>
<p>In the past few years, members of Sia’s research group have miniaturized the technology, reduced its power requirements, and integrated it with everyday mobile devices. The tiny amount of current available in a smartphone audio jack is all that’s needed to power the sensing and data management. (One charge of an iPod Touch can power 41 tests.) “We sort of smartphoned it, in a way,” Sia says. “We’ve greatly reduced the size, cost, and power requirements.”</p>
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<p>Sia’s group also created software that records the results of tests and upload those results to a server—a crucial function for data collection and retention. The group worked on HIV and syphilis markers as part of a USAID program on maternal health.</p>
<p>“This work is a proof of how technology can improve diagnosis and care, making it faster and simpler and cheaper without compromising the existing quality,” says Sabin Nsanzimana, the manager of the sexually transmitted disease division at Rwanda’s Ministry of Health. However, “it may take time, or bigger studies,” to see wider adoption, Nsanzimana says.</p>
<p>Sia says he is now planning a larger-scale field trial and sees far broader implications for smartphone-based diagnostics. “While we’ve been working on HIV and syphilis, this technology can be used for a variety of different applications, obviously,” he says. “You could see health-care systems transformed in a very fundamental way if consumers can get precise measurements in a decentralized manner.”</p>Thu, 05 Feb 2015 15:55:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534716/smartphone-test-for-hiv-and-syphilis-costs-pennies/Sales of Bigger Cars Will Force Manufacturers to Stress More Fuel-Efficient Oneshttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/534441/sales-of-bigger-cars-will-force-manufacturers-to-stress-more-fuel-efficient-ones/
<p>Carmakers must also push out more of the cleaner vehicles to meet average fleet emissions standards.</p>
<!--smart_paging_filter--><p>Falling gas prices last year were correlated with increased sales of gas-guzzling SUVs and a softening in demand for hybrids like Toyota’s Prius—resulting in a dip in the average fuel efficiency of vehicles sold at the end of the year.</p>
<p>Last August—before the big plunge in oil prices—average consumption of all U.S. passenger vehicles sold in that month was 25.8 miles per gallon. In December, that had dipped to 25.1 miles per gallon, in large part because of a strong sales shift toward SUVs and other vehicles that get poor gas mileage.</p>
<p>That comes against a larger trend of rising fuel efficiency overall in the past several years—from 20.8 miles per gallon for model year 2008 vehicles to 25.3 miles per gallon for model year 2014 vehicles, according to <a href="http://www.umich.edu/~umtriswt/EDI_sales-weighted-mpg.html" target="_blank">the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute</a>.</p>
<p>The dip due to cheaper gas could, however, be buffered somewhat by federal regulations for fuel efficiencies. U.S. carmakers are governed by regulations called “corporate average fuel efficiency standards” that set the average fuel economy that carmakers must achieve in two classes of vehicle: cars and light trucks, which include popular SUVs. When sales of gas-guzzling vehicles grow, carmakers must balance that out with higher sales of lower-consuming vehicles to keep the average on track.</p>
<p>One way to do that is to push out SUVs that have relatively smaller engines. For example, faced with a surge in interest in Sierra SUVs or Silverado pickup trucks, GM will now manufacture—then more-aggressively market—versions that have smaller engine displacements, says Darin Gesse, marketing product manager for GM’s electric car, the Chevy Volt. The Sierra and Silverado come with an eight-cylinder version that gets 19 miles per gallon, and a six-cylinder version that gets 20 miles per gallon.</p>
<p>For the same reason that the auto industry will be motivated to push out more-efficient versions of light trucks and SUVs, the industry will be increasingly pressured in 2015 to hawk smaller versions of cars, as well as hybrids and electrics, tending to build market share and technology advances for those cars, too, Gesse says.</p>Thu, 29 Jan 2015 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534441/sales-of-bigger-cars-will-force-manufacturers-to-stress-more-fuel-efficient-ones/Your Mobile Phone Is More Secure Than Your Visa Cardhttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/534041/your-mobile-phone-is-more-secure-than-your-visa-card/
<p>As mobile payments become more common, thieves will be more likely to target them.</p>
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<p>Is waving your smartphone over a store-counter gadget really a secure way to buy something?</p>
<p>Right now, such mobile payments—via Apple Pay and similar systems—are extremely safe and secure, thanks to layers of protections including PINs, fingerprint identification, cryptography, and the logging of transaction data.</p>
<p>Mobile payment systems use near-field communication, or NFC, to transfer payment information from the phone to a store terminal within a few centimeters. Whereas information stored on magnetic-stripe credit cards can be read by anyone with access to the card, mobile payment systems generally store the data in encrypted form on a special NFC chip and require the user to enter a PIN or even a fingerprint.</p>
<p>While newer credit cards also include a chip and require users to enter a PIN, mobile phones could still hold an advantage because they can log location and other data that could be used later to help prove whether a transaction was fraudulent or not.</p>
<p>To avoid major damage if retailers’ databases are hacked, Apple Pay and some others also give stores “tokens,” or encrypted strings of data about the purchase, without passing along the actual credit card numbers.</p>
<p>For now, attackers have easier targets than mobile payments, including magnetic-­swipe systems and department store servers housing millions of card numbers. However, as credit cards become harder to hack and more payments are made on smartphone, mobile payments will increasingly attract thieves.</p>
<p>One route in might be malicious software that steals your phone’s payment credentials by getting beyond barriers imposed by Android and Apple’s IOS. An essential defense: partitioning off payment functions with software or, better yet, more secure chips. Chipmakers are already broadening their products to emphasize “walling-off” functions, with one example being ARM’s <a href="http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzone/index.php" target="_blank">TrustZone</a>.</p>Mon, 26 Jan 2015 05:00:01 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534041/your-mobile-phone-is-more-secure-than-your-visa-card/Harvesting Data Helps Farms Grow Yieldshttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/534386/harvesting-data-helps-farms-grow-yields/
<p>640Labs, acquired by Monsanto, provides analytics that can help farmers increase production.</p>
<p>Matt Schweigert owns 7,000 acres of corn and soybean fields in Cuba City, Wisconsin. His 25 tractors, combines, and other farm machinery are fitted with the latest in agricultural technology: sensors that track GPS location and measure the number of seeds planted, the volume of fertilizer sprayed, and the quantities of harvested ears and beans.</p>
<p>But to use the data, his employees typically glance at displays in the cabs (to spot problems such as poorly spaced seed planting); or they pull out thumb drives from onboard computers to analyze everything later.</p>
<p>In 2013 Schweigert began testing a rubberized, cylindrical gadget made by a Chicago startup called <a href="http://www.640labs.com/" target="0">640Labs</a>. He plugs it into his equipment data ports, and the device automatically transmits data wirelessly to a cloud-based analytics platform.</p>
<p>The platform compares yields in different fields within one farm, how the outputs compared to those from other farms, and what actions—such as the date of planting or fertilizer application levels—might be responsible for the difference. “The vast majority of data literally dies in the field,” says Corbett Kull, cofounder of 640Labs. “The farmer is busy enough trying to manage his farm and drive the tractor, and what we are trying to do is make it easier.”</p>
<p><span>For farmers, sophisticated weather prediction and data analysis can show what seed to plant on which day, which days to add fertilizer and herbicide, and when to harvest, says David LeZaks, a scientist <span>at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who <span>researches sustainable agriculture.</span></span></span></p>
<p>“We know pretty quick if a field got overapplied or underapplied with herbicide,” says Schweigert of the 640Labs technology. “Maybe we come back and see if we have adequate weed control. It works the same way for fertilizer. Now we are catching more stuff.”</p>
<p>Last month the agriculture giant <a href="http://www.monsanto.com/pages/default.aspx" target="0">Monsanto</a> acquired 640Labs as part of an ongoing effort to invest in agricultural data science. In 2013 Monsanto acquired <a href="http://www.climate.com/" target="0">Climate Corp.</a>, a company that has amassed a decade of data on precipitation and soil conditions for 29 million farm fields in the United States. Climate Corp. uses the data to calculate localized weather predictions, and sells insurance against weather-related crop losses. A year before, Monsanto bought <a href="http://www.precisionplanting.com/#/" target="0">Precision Planting</a>, a company that sells very precise planting and related data-recording technology.</p>
<p>“The climate is changing and the challenges are increasing,” says Robert Fraley, chief technology officer of Monsanto. “I believe it is possible we can improve yields on the land we farm today so dramatically [that by] the time 2050 rolls around, we will be able to farm less land.”</p>Fri, 23 Jan 2015 21:40:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534386/harvesting-data-helps-farms-grow-yields/Low Oil Prices Mean Keystone Pipeline Makes No Sensehttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/533981/low-oil-prices-mean-keystone-pipeline-makes-no-sense/
<p>New exploration on the bulk of Canada’s oil sands reserves can’t start unless prices are at least $60 per barrel, economists say.</p>
<!--smart_paging_filter--><p>The recent dramatic plunge in oil prices threatens to make the proposed Keystone XL pipeline something of a white elephant.</p>
<p>The proposed <a href="http://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa/keystone-xl-project-epa-comment-letter-20110125.pdf" target="0">pipeline</a>, which would transport crude oil from these sands to refineries along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, is a flashpoint in U.S. politics. The Republican-led Congress wants to build it, and the House of Representatives is set to vote on this question. President Obama has pledged a veto.</p>
<p>But if prices stay so low over the coming year, Canada’s vast fossil fuel resource, called tar sands or oil sands, wouldn’t fetch high enough prices to be mined in the first place.</p>
<p>If prices stay in the low $50 range, “the necessity for Keystone XL may disappear,” says Pete Howard, the president emeritus of the <a href="http://www.ceri.ca/" target="0">Canadian Energy Research Institute</a> in Calgary, Alberta. “We’ve got rail [transportation] right now as a safety valve, and if we build up rail capacity to carry three-quarters of a million barrels, that pretty much takes up all the projects that are under construction right now.”</p>
<p>Last summer, rail capacity handled 240,000 barrels daily, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers projects that rail capacity will grow to 700,000 barrels per day by 2016.</p>
<p>Oil prices today stand around $50 a barrel, a plunge of more than 50 percent since last summer due to a glut of production, including from the United States. Saudi Arabia’s recent decision to not scale back production has also softened demand.</p>
<p>Canada holds the world’s largest known reserves of bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum, in underground sands in the province of Alberta. Recovering this oil is done in two basic ways: washing the sands with hot water and chemicals, or injecting steam through horizontal shafts underground. Both processes are more costly than traditional oil drilling, and emit more greenhouse gases (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/423582/canadas-oil-sands-on-the-verge-of-a-boom-again/" target="0">Canada’s Oil Sands on the Verge of a Boom Again</a>”).</p>
<p>Right now there are at least 20 oil sands projects under construction in Alberta that are due to come online between now and the end of 2017. Regardless of oil prices, they will be finished because much of the capital expenditure is already sunk. However, Howard adds, “by this time next year, if the oil price hasn’t moved back upwards, the next stream of projects will start to be delayed.”</p>
<p>Last year, a London-based think tank, <a href="http://www.carbontracker.org/" target="0">Carbon Tracker Initiative</a>, issued a <a href="http://www.carbontracker.org/report/oilsands/" target="0">report</a> carrying even more conservative predictions. It said oil prices would need to be at $95 per barrel or higher for 92 percent of Canada’s tar sands production to make economic sense.</p>
<p>That would leave much of the resource untouched. Even when existing construction projects come online, Alberta will produce around a million barrels per day. Canada is estimated to have the capacity to produce six million barrels, if fully developed.</p>
<p>Temporary dips in oil prices are no big deal because investment decisions involve long time horizons. Conventional tar sands mining projects have 40 or more years of lifetime; steam-assisted projects last 30 years. To make economic sense over the long term, the former requires an average cost of $85 a barrel; the latter, $60 or more a barrel.</p>
<p>President Obama has said he would approve the pipeline only if it did not “significantly exacerbate” climate change. A State Department study concluded Keystone would probably have no such impact because the oil would be mined anyway.</p>Fri, 09 Jan 2015 18:50:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533981/low-oil-prices-mean-keystone-pipeline-makes-no-sense/CES 2015: Nvidia Demos a Car Computer Trained with “Deep Learning”http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533936/ces-2015-nvidia-demos-a-car-computer-trained-with-deep-learning/
<p>A commercial device uses powerful image and information processing to let cars interpret 360° camera views.</p>
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<p >The Drive CX</p>
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<p>Many cars now include cameras or other sensors that record the passing world and trigger intelligent behavior, such as automatic braking or steering to avoid an obstacle. Today’s systems are usually unable to tell the difference between a trash can and traffic cop standing next to it, though.</p>
<p>This week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, <a href="http://www.nvidia.com" target="0">Nvidia</a>, a leading marking of computer graphics chips, unveiled a vehicle computer called the <a href="http://www.nvidia.com/object/drive-px.html" target="0">Drive PX</a> that could help cars interpret and react to the world around them.</p>
<p>Nvidia already supplies chips to many car makers, but engineers at those companies usually have to write software to collect and process data from various different sensor systems. Drive PX is more powerful than existing hardware, and it should also make it easier to integrate and process sensor data.</p>
<p>The computer uses Nvidia’s new graphics microprocessor, the Tegra X1. It is capable of processing information from up to 12 cameras simultaneously, and it comes with software designed to assist with safety or autonomous driving systems. Most impressive, it includes a system trained to recognize different objects using a powerful technique known as deep learning (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513696/deep-learning/" target="0">10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Deep Learning</a>”). Another computer from Nvidia, called the <a href="http://www.nvidia.com/object/drive-cx.html" target="_blank">Drive CX</a>, is designed to generate realistic 3-D maps and other graphics for dashboard displays.</p>
<p>“It’s pretty cool to bring this level of powerful computation into cars,” said <a href="http://meche.mit.edu/people/?id=52" target="0">John Leonard</a>, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, who works on autonomous-car technology. “It’s the first such computer that seems really designed for a car—an autopilot computer.”</p>
<p>The new Nvidia hardware can also be updated remotely, so that car manufacturers can fix bugs or add new functionality. This is something few car companies, aside from Tesla, do currently.</p>
<p>So far Audi has emerged as an early buyer; at CES, the company showed off a luxury concept car called the Audi Prologue that includes the Drive PX. A year ago, the company announced at CES that it had developed a compact computer for processing sensor information (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523351/ces-2014-audi-shows-off-a-compact-brain-for-self-driving-cars/" target="0">Audi Shows Off a Compact Brain for Self-Driving Cars</a>”). That, too, included Nvidia chips.</p>
<p>The introduction of Nvidia’s product is a landmark moment for deep learning, a technology that processes sensory information efficiently by loosely mimicking the way the brain works. At CES, Nvidia showed that its software can detect objects such as cars, people, bicycles, and signs, even when they are partly hidden.</p>
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<p>Yoshua Bengio, a deep-learning researcher at the University of Montreal, says the Nvidia chipset is an important commercial milestone. “I would not call it a breakthrough, but more a continuous advance in a direction that has been going for a number of years now,” he said.</p>
<p>Yann LeCun, a data scientist at New York University who leads deep-learning efforts at Facebook (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519411/facebook-launches-advanced-ai-effort-to-find-meaning-in-your-posts/" target="_blank">Facebook Launches Advanced AI Effort to Find Meaning in Your Posts</a>”), also sees the announcement as an important step: “It is significant because current solutions tend to be closed and proprietary, use custom and inflexible hardware, and tend to be ‘black boxes’ that equipment manufacturers cannot really customize.”</p>
<p>At a press event Sunday, Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, said the devices will provide “more computing horsepower inside a car than anything you have today.”</p>Tue, 06 Jan 2015 22:21:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533936/ces-2015-nvidia-demos-a-car-computer-trained-with-deep-learning/2014 in Energy: Dire Warnings, Slow Progress, and a Fusion Boasthttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/533666/2014-in-energy-dire-warnings-slow-progress-and-a-fusion-boast/
<p>The year saw a major new report on climate change—and modest movement on renewables, carbon burial, and emissions agreements.</p>
<!--smart_paging_filter--><p>In 2014, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued stark warnings in its latest assessment of climate science, projecting potentially catastrophic outcomes if greenhouse-gas emissions are not brought in check.</p>
<p>The IPCC found, among other things, that <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525891/un-climate-report-warns-of-increased-risk-to-crops/" target="_blank">crops could be hard hit</a>, something that is prompting nations like China <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531721/chinas-gmo-stockpile/" target="_blank">to turn to genetically modified crops</a>, <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/photoessay/531851/chinas-growing-bets-on-gmos/" target="_blank">including wheat, rice, and corn</a>.</p>
<p>The U.N. also found that the cost of limiting greenhouse-gas concentrations to a level that would keep global warming under 2 <strong>°</strong>C could <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/526646/the-cost-of-limiting-climate-change-could-double-without-carbon-capture-technology/" target="_blank">more than double if carbon capture and storage (CCS)</a> isn’t deployed. The pronouncement was followed by the news that <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531321/in-a-first-commercial-coal-plant-buries-its-co2/" target="_blank">the first commercial coal plant</a> with CCS had gone online, a project in Saskatchewan <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/demo/533351/a-coal-plant-that-buries-its-greenhouse-gases/" target="_blank">shown here</a>. But that achievement also served to show how far away from mass implementation the technology remains.</p>
<p>With the U.N. warnings as a backdrop, renewable energy technologies continued progressing, albeit too slowly to make much difference. New projects included the commercialization of <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531756/will-a-breakthrough-solar-technology-see-the-light-of-day/" target="_blank">one of the most efficient solar panels yet made</a> and the testing of<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/aroundmit/527316/high-flying-turbine-produces-more-power/" target="_blank"> turbines that capture strong winds at 1,000 feet</a>.</p>
<p>Solar City, the installation company chaired by billionaire Elon Musk, <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528466/elon-musk-needs-a-very-big-factory-for-his-new-solar-technology/" target="_blank">acquired a solar-panel maker</a> and announced plans for a big factory. But not all solar technologies fared well. A <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525296/cheap-solar-power-at-night/" target="_blank">solar thermal plant in California</a>—which uses concentrated heat from the sun to power a conventional turbine—proved less economical than predicted, even as conventional photovoltaic technologies plunged in price.</p>
<p>Energy from intermittent sources like sun and wind must be stored to be useful, and 2014 saw the emergence of <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/demo/524466/storing-the-sun/" target="_blank">a cheap, nontoxic battery</a> for storing electricity produced by wind and solar technologies­—a technology that was <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532311/a-battery-to-prop-up-renewable-power-hits-the-market/" target="_blank">subsequently commercialized</a>. Grid storage advances included <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527061/ambri-funding-influx-suggests-a-new-day-for-grid-batteries/" target="_blank">other battery technologies</a> and <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531141/a-promising-step-toward-round-the-clock-solar-power/" target="_blank">a promising step toward more cheaply splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen</a>.</p>
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<p>On the nuclear front, there was little progress, though Lockheed Martin <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-martin-really-have-a-breakthrough-fusion-machine/" target="_blank">claimed to have developed a promising fusion reactor</a> while a U.S. company announced plans to test <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530981/new-nuclear-fuel-could-boost-reactors-but-also-safety-worries/" target="_blank">an energy-boosting fuel rod design</a> that could increase the output of many existing nuclear power plants.</p>
<p>In September, the World Meteorological Society found <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530591/surging-carbon-dioxide-shows-clean-tech-failure/" target="_blank">that greenhouse-gas emissions</a> had increased dramatically from 2012 to 2013. In better news toward the end of the year, the <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532601/china-could-deliver-on-its-carbon-promise-earlier-than-expected/" target="_blank">United States and China agreed to reduce emissions</a>—a first for China.</p>
<p>But by the end of the year, the dominant energy story was quite different: oil prices plummeted, threatening to <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532956/cheap-oil-could-kill-off-cellulosic-ethanol/" target="_blank">kill off efforts at making renewable liquid fuels</a>. The new affordability of oil could stimulate even more energy use, further increasing emissions.</p>
<p>In the closing weeks of the year, a United Nations summit in Lima, Peru, produced a broad-based agreement by 190 nations to <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533581/lima-climate-accord-might-boost-renewables/" target="_blank">start making their own emissions-reducing plans</a>. This preliminary effort could evolve into something substantive by the time of the next U.N. climate summit, scheduled for late 2015 in Paris.</p>Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533666/2014-in-energy-dire-warnings-slow-progress-and-a-fusion-boast/Hundreds of Portuguese Buses and Taxis Are Also Wi-Fi Routershttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/533176/hundreds-of-portuguese-buses-and-taxis-are-also-wi-fi-routers/
<p>Routers on 600 buses and taxis allow free Internet access and collect data for city planners.</p>
<p>A massive mobile Wi-Fi network that could be a model for many cities was launched in the city of Porto, Portugal, this fall. Buses and taxis are equipped with routers that serve as mobile Wi-Fi hot spots for tens of thousands of riders. The routers also collect data from the vehicles—and from sensors on trash bins around the city—and relay it back to city offices to help with civic planning.</p>
<p>More than 600 buses and taxis are part of the network, which is now serving 70,000 people a month and absorbing between 50 and 80 percent of wireless traffic from users who otherwise would have had to use the cellular network. Built by a startup called <a href="http://www.veniam.com/" target="_blank">Veniam</a>, spun out of the University of Porto, it is the largest and most sophisticated vehicle-based network in the world, the company says.</p>
<p>In addition to supplying Internet access, the Porto network is being used to collect sensor data. When buses and taxis hit a sharp bump that might be due to a pothole, the suspension sensors detect this and relay the information to City Hall to help identify where roads need repairs. Waste containers equipped with sensors use the network to relay whether they are full, so they can be picked up at the most efficient times.</p>
<p>The company recently got $4.9 million in venture funding and set up its headquarters in Mountain View, California. Founder Joao Barros, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Porto, says it plans to expand service to other cities.</p>Fri, 26 Dec 2014 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533176/hundreds-of-portuguese-buses-and-taxis-are-also-wi-fi-routers/Cuba’s Internet Revolution Faces Economic and Political Realitieshttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/533701/cubas-internet-revolution-faces-economic-and-political-realities/
<p>The new White House approach could help Cubans gain access to the Internet—but the question is whether the regime will play ball.</p>
<!--smart_paging_filter--><p>Cubans could be about to enjoy vastly improved access to communications technology under proposed <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/fact-sheet-charting-new-course-cuba" target="0">normalization of relations</a> with the United States, which will permit companies to import telecom infrastructure and expertise. But economic and political obstacles still need to be overcome for cheap, open Internet access to become a reality.</p>
<p>While the White House wants to remove trade restrictions on sending telecom gear and other technology to the country, it’s not yet clear what the regime of Raúl Castro, which strictly controls Internet access, will do.</p>
<p>“Castro has not committed to anything other than the prisoner swap and allowing a U.S. embassy on the island,” says Coco Fusco, a visiting associate professor in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing program at MIT, who visits Cuba frequently and has done research on <a href="http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2014/10/06/coco-fuscos-introduction-to-the-cuban-blogosphere/#sthash.fBdg4CsC.dpuf" target="0">Cuba’s blogosphere</a>. “No concrete promises have been made. We have to wait and see what the Cuban government actually decides to allow.”</p>
<p>Even basic Internet services could transform daily life in Cuba. Right now, other than at certain workplaces, only elites can easily get online. At government-sanctioned cyber-cafés, connecting to websites outside Cuba costs at least $5 an hour—a hefty price in a nation where the average monthly wage is $20. And in some cases users have been asked to sign agreements not to use their Web activities to do anything that might harm “public security.”</p>
<p>Those aren’t the only restrictions. If Cubans want to tweet or make other social media posting using their mobile phones–which don’t have Internet access–they must use an international phone number at a cost of about $1 per message, says Fusco. Plus, “the Cuban government has a monopoly on telecommunications service and can charge ridiculous rates for international and cell-phone service.”</p>
<p>The new policies could provide indirect technological help by making it easier for Cubans to afford things like mobile phones. The White House wants to authorize American credit card usage in Cuba, allow more travel into the country, and loosen policies on cash remittances, all of which could put more cash in people’s pockets.</p>
<p>“Common things like computers, mobile phones, and thumb drives are not easy to find in Cuba, and people want them,” says Ellery Roberts Biddle, editor of <a href="http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org" target="0">Global Voices Advocacy</a>, who studies the politics of Internet use in Cuba (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517241/cubas-new-internet-service-is-also-no-bed-of-roses/" target="0">Cuba’s New Internet Service Is Also No Bed of Roses</a>”). Having more money will be a huge help, she says: right now, Cubans often share information by passing around storage devices and plugging them into whatever old PCs they have access to.</p>
<p>Cuba’s electronic isolation can easily be seen in its fiber Internet connections. Whereas the Dominican Republic, nearby, has five fiber-optic cables landing on the coastline, Cuba has only one, financed by the Venezuelan government.</p>
<p>It’s an open question whether Cuba will build out public infrastructure and allow increased investment by U.S. and global technology companies and telecoms. “But if this does in fact occur, it will be interesting to see if they pursue a mobile-first model instead of investing in fiber deployment,” says David Belson, senior director of industry and data intelligence at Akamai, the Web-optimization company. Either way, such changes would require not just a relaxation of Cuban restrictions on Internet content, but also economic growth to support the new infrastructure and ensure that people have enough money to pay for service.</p>
<p>Even if Cuba’s dictatorship does pursue new communications technology, it might include means to help maintain control over the Internet, a strategy adopted by other repressive regimes. Several use American-made technology to filter and spy on their populations (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/426076/regimes-use-us-tech-to-censor-citizens-study-finds/">Regimes Use U.S. Tech to Censor Citizens, Study Finds</a>”).</p>
<p>For now, restrictions on communication technologies represent an “internal blockade,” says Ted Henken, a professor at Baruch College in New York City and author of a book about <a href="https://www.rienner.com/title/Entrepreneurial_Cuba_The_Changing_Policy_Landscape" target="_blank"> Cuban entrepreneurial policy</a>. “Even as the external embargo crumbles, the internal embargo remains,” he says.</p>Sun, 21 Dec 2014 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533701/cubas-internet-revolution-faces-economic-and-political-realities/Lima Climate Accord Might Boost Renewableshttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/533581/lima-climate-accord-might-boost-renewables/
<p>Nations agree to start drafting climate action plans, which could encourage greater investment in clean energy.</p>
<p>The United Nations climate negotiations that concluded over the weekend in Lima, Peru, included an <a href="http://newsroom.unfccc.int/lima/lima-call-for-climate-action-puts-world-on-track-to-paris-2015/" target="_blank">agreement</a> among 190 nations—rich and poor—to develop action plans over the next several months outlining how they will work to avert climate change. It is the first time so many nations have agreed to make such commitments.</p>
<p>This means more nations are likely to draft plans that embrace clean-tech innovation and renewable energy in advance of a hoped-for climate agreement in Paris next year, policy experts say.</p>
<p>“We see a clear role for setting bold renewable-energy targets that can cut emissions while boosting economic growth and energy diversity around the world,” says Risa Edelman, director of international programs at the American Council on Renewable Energy, an industry group based in Washington, DC.</p>
<p>The action plans are supposed to include statements about how each nation will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. They can include numerical reference points such as the time frame for reductions and a statement of how emissions will be calculated. The deadline for submission is the end of March 2015, with a second deadline in June for any stragglers.</p>
<p>Robert Stavins, an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, says what’s most important is that the Lima talks achieved a broad geographic scope of participation that did not exist before. “Each agreement is no more than one step to be followed by others. And most important now for ultimate success later is a sound foundation, which is what the Lima decision can provide,” he wrote in a <a href="http://www.robertstavinsblog.org/2014/12/14/assessing-the-outcome-of-the-lima-climate-talks/" target="_blank">blog post</a> on Monday.</p>
<p>And while the details are vague, the agreement seems likely to increase innovation, says David Victor, director of the Laboratory of International Law and Regulation at the University of California, San Diego. “This is a flexible system into which many more countries can, and will, be contributing efforts,” he said. Victor predicts that “many countries will include innovation policies in their pledges.”</p>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 20:21:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533581/lima-climate-accord-might-boost-renewables/Desalination out of Desperationhttp://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalination-out-of-desperation/
<p>Severe droughts are forcing researchers to rethink how technology can increase the supply of fresh water.</p>
<!--smart_paging_filter--><p>Even in drought-stricken California, San Diego stands out. It gets less rain than parched Los Angeles or Fresno. The region has less groundwater than many other parts of the state. And more than 80 percent of water for homes and businesses is imported from sources that are increasingly stressed. The Colorado River is so overtaxed that it rarely reaches the sea; water originating in the Sacramento River delta, more than 400 miles north, was rationed by state officials this year, cutting off some farmers in California’s Central Valley from their main source of irrigation. San Diego County, hot, dry, and increasingly populous, offers a preview of where much of the world is headed. So too does a recent decision by the county government: it is building the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, at a cost of $1 billion.</p>
<p>The massive project, in Carlsbad, teems with nearly 500 workers in yellow hard hats. When it’s done next year, it will take in more than 100 million gallons of Pacific Ocean water daily and produce 54 million gallons of fresh, drinkable water. While this adds up to just 10 percent of the county’s water delivery needs, it will, crucially, be reliable and drought-proof—a hedge against potentially worse times ahead.</p>
<p>The county is betting on a combination of modern engineering and decades-old desalination technology. A pipe trench under construction leads to a nearby lagoon inlet; 18 house-size concrete tanks await loads of sand and charcoal to treat the salt water before it is ready for desalination; pressurizers lead to a stainless-steel pipe one meter in diameter. This final piece of gleaming hardware will convey water under high pressure into 2,000 fiberglass tubes, where it will be squeezed through semipermeable polymer membranes. What gets through will be fresh water, leaving brine behind.</p>
<p>The process is called reverse osmosis (RO), and it’s the mainstay of large-scale desalination facilities around the world. As water is forced through the membrane, the polymer allows the water molecules to pass while blocking the salts and other inorganic impurities. Global desalination output has tripled since 2000: 16,000 plants are up and running around the world, and the pace of construction is expected to increase while the technology continues to improve. Carlsbad, for example, has been outfitted with state-of-the art commercial membranes and advanced pressure-recovery systems. But the plants remain costly to build and operate.</p>
<p>Seawater desalination, in fact, is one of the most expensive sources of fresh water. The water sells—depending on site conditions—for between $1,000 and $2,500 per acre-foot (the amount used by two five-person U.S. households per year). Carlsbad’s product will sell for around $2,000, which is 80 percent more than the county pays for treated water from outside the area. One reason is the huge amount of energy required to push water through the membranes. And Carlsbad, like most desalination plants, is being built with extra pumps, treatment capacity, and membrane tubes, the better to guarantee uptime. “Because it is a critical asset for the region, there is a tremendous amount of redundancy to give high reliability,” says Jonathan Loveland, vice president at Poseidon Water, the owner of the plant. “If any piece fails, something else will pick up the slack.”</p>
<p>Already, some 700 million people worldwide suffer from water scarcity, but that number is expected to swell to 1.8 billion in just 10 years. Some countries, like Israel, already rely heavily on desalination; more will follow suit. In many places, “we are already at the limit of renewable water resources, and yet we continue to grow,” says John Lienhard, a mechanical engineer and director of the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT. “On top of that we have global warming, with hotter and drier conditions in many areas, which will potentially further reduce the amount of renewable water available.” While conservation and recycling will help, you can’t recycle what you don’t have. “As coastal cities grow,” he says, “the value of seawater desalination is going to increase rapidly, and it’s likely we will see widespread adoption.”</p>
<p>Against this grim backdrop, there is some good news. In short, desalination is ripe for technological improvement. A combination of sensor-driven optimization and automation, plus new types of membranes, could eventually allow for desalination plants that are half the size and use commensurately less energy. Among other benefits, small, mobile desalination units could be used in agricultural regions hundreds of miles away from the ocean, where demand for water is great and growing.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/desal.2x1000.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/desal.2x519.jpg" alt="" width="" height="" hspace="15" vspace="15" /></a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Smart Water</strong></p>
<p>Every two weeks, Yoram Cohen, a chemical engineer who heads the Water Technology Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, hits the road for the drought-blasted San Joaquin Valley. Part of the state’s vast agricultural midsection that grows much of the country’s produce, the region has suffered badly. Last year, 2014, was the third straight drought year—at a time when demand for water has reached an all-time high. I joined Cohen for a recent outing: a car ride from his labs at UCLA to the small valley town of Firebaugh, in one of the hardest-hit agricultural regions in the state. Along I-5, the highway that connects the cities of California’s southern coast with its central valley, we saw vast water-engineering edifices built in the 1950s, including four vast pipes traversing the Tehachapi ­Mountains and the cement-lined California Aqueduct, which cuts a serpentine path through the valley floor. The state’s water system—devoted roughly 80 percent to agriculture and 20 percent to cities—is still conveying water pumped all the way from the Sacramento River delta through the 444-mile California Aqueduct. The water infrastructure made Southern California what it is today.</p>
<p>But it’s a system under great stress. California’s persistent lack of precipitation means 80 percent of the state is now in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, forcing water restrictions in urban areas and cutoffs to some farmers. The results are plain to see: tracts of parched farmland lie newly abandoned; road signs flash warnings of “extreme drought”; signs plead “Water = Jobs.” According to a recent study by the University of California, Davis, the drought inflicted $1.5 billion in agricultural losses in 2014 alone.</p>
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<img src="http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/desal.3x519.jpg" width="519" height="379" alt="" /> <p >Still under construction, the desalination plant in Carlsbad, California, will be the largest such facility in the United States. Awaiting installation at the facility are stainless-steel turbine pumps, wrapped in protective Mylar, that will be used to pump the clean water. </p>
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<p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The Israeli-born Cohen explains that despite these pressures, desalination hasn’t fundamentally changed since the 1980s. The time it takes to plan for big projects (Carlsbad took 14 years) makes it hard for investors to expect much payoff from new technologies, and U.S. federal research funding has gone to other priorities. Besides, it’s been possible to recycle or conserve water so that expensive desalination has been less necessary. The flip side of this, Cohen says, is that desalination is now in a position to be transformed by the same kinds of sensing, automation, and algorithm-controlled processes that are remaking other industries. I would soon see what he was talking about.</span></p>
<p>As the late-October sun set, long shadows cast the crusty ground in high relief. We exited I-5, drove nine miles, and turned right on a hard-packed dirt lane between pistachio trees. It was dusk, and the beams from headlights disappeared into the flat desert nothingness. Yet when I opened the window, I caught a whiff of something that smelled vaguely like the salty air at the coast. The headlights exposed the culprit: a pipe vomiting a brew of much-reused agricultural runoff. It had started in the ­Sacramento delta as fresh water. But it got progressively more concentrated by evaporation in the aqueduct system, and still more so as it was applied to crops, picked up minerals in the ground, and was applied to crops again. It was now almost as saline as seawater, and contaminated with a range of minerals and fertilizers as well.</p>
<blockquote class="pullquote">
<p>It takes a lot of energy to push water through the membranes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cohen led me to a nearby trailer inhabited by two graduate students and a vast collection of tanks, pipes, valves, tubes, and computers. It was a totally automated system, able to use any of the brackish or polluted stuff Firebaugh’s farmers produce and generate 30,000 drinkable gallons per day. A computer screen displayed a real-time black-and-white image that looked like a lunar landscape. It was a shot from a piece of the polyamide membrane at the center of the process. The image revealed a few white chunks: the beginning of mineral scaling, a bane of membranes. Image analysis software can detect this happening, and an algorithm can direct a valve to open and dispense an antiscaling solution into the system—keeping ahead of the problem. Other sensors and control systems can drive tweaks to avert other fouling problems, changing the pressure or the dosage of chemical additives used for pretreatment.</p>
<p>Cohen reached for a plastic tube and twisted a small tap. Clear water drooled out; he held his hand out to capture some, lifted it to his mouth, drank a bit, and rubbed the rest on his face. “If we can figure out a car that does not require a driver, why can’t we figure out how to run an RO plant without operators?” he said.</p>
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<img src="http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/desal.4x299.jpg" width="299" height="456" alt="" /> </aside>
<p>The savings could be significant: automated systems such as these could probably save between one-third and one-half the costs of conventional desalination plants, Cohen says. But more than that, a trailer-sized unit—able to adapt to different sites and conditions by the hour—could simply roll around and help farmers get fresh water no matter what they start with.</p>
<p><strong>Magic Membranes</strong></p>
<p>Even if systems get smarter, reverse osmosis is still an energy hog. Carlsbad will consume more than 35 megawatts of electricity (which could power around 30,000 homes), for an annual bill of $30 million. About two-thirds of that will go to the water pressure needed to make the technology work. (The other third will go mostly to pumping the water 10 miles uphill to a reservoir, as well as to pretreatment and intake pumping.) Carlsbad’s owners estimate that the plant will consume 2.8 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter for desalination alone. Some small reverse-osmosis systems, using differently configured processes (running water in batches rather than pumping continuously), are hitting 1.5 to 1.7 kilowatt-hours, says Lienhard. But the technology hasn’t been proved at larger scales.</p>
<p>What’s the problem? It takes a lot of work to push water through the membranes—pressure that translates into high energy usage. Those relatively thick polyamide membranes, though far from ideal, are the best we’ve got right now. But a few groups are trying to come up with more efficient materials. At MIT, mechanical engineer Rohit Karnik’s team is building membranes a single atom thick, to help water molecules just pop through. The researchers blast graphene with ion beams and bathe it in chemicals to etch pores less than a nanometer across.</p>
<p>In theory, an essentially two-dimensional membrane like this one provides the least possible resistance. Computer models by Jeffrey Grossman’s materials science and engineering group at MIT showed that graphene membranes could cut the energy used in reverse osmosis by 15 to 46 percent. Even better, the high permeability could mean that far less surface area is needed to get the job done, so the entire plant could be half the size.</p>
<p>So far Karnik has fabricated a one-square-centimeter graphene membrane, punched holes in it, and shown that it can selectively hold back certain ions. But he’s not yet shown it can actually desalinate seawater, even on a lab bench. And once he or another group achieves that, the next challenge is to reliably make miles of membrane materials with consistent features. Karnik is optimistic that he’ll get there, but he says it will be years before graphene membranes are ready.</p>
<p>Existing membrane materials might get better thanks to other nanoengineering approaches. In a small section of the Firebaugh trailer, Cohen is running an experiment with a membrane of his group’s own devising. A base layer is made of polyamide. But then he adds a layer of tentacle-like brushes made of polymers that are hydrophilic, which means they attract water. Early research suggests these hybrid membranes may be far better at resisting fouling, because the brushes—which he likens to kelp swaying on an undersea rock—discourage things from sticking. This could mean less downtime, fewer replacements, and faster throughput. But Cohen, taking a swig of his ditch water, urges realism. “People have this fixation that somehow there will be a magic membrane that will reduce the cost of desalination to next to none, and I think that is a little bit misleading,” he says.</p>
<p>For now in California’s coastal municipalities, seawater is still the option of last resort, after conservation, recycling, and even treating and reusing sewage. While many are weighing desalination, the city most likely to follow in San Diego’s footsteps is Santa Barbara. That’s because it already built an RO plant in the early 1990s after a five-year drought, only to quickly shut it down when a couple of years of good winter rains refilled reservoirs. The city recently moved to start funding an expensive rehabilitation of the site so that it can be reactivated if needed. Other municipalities have decided it’s too expensive or environmentally problematic (the facilities inevitably kill fish eggs and other marine life, unless intake pipes are buried beneath sand at great cost).</p>
<p>But that assessment might get turned on its head. Water captured in reservoirs or pumped from faraway deltas is getting more expensive—and such alternatives come with their own environmental costs. As sources dry up and competition for water mounts from businesses, farmers, and cities, we will inevitably turn to seawater and other salty sources. It might not be a great solution, but the bottom line is that we are left with fewer and fewer choices in a water-starved world.</p>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalination-out-of-desperation/Researchers Will Study Police Confrontations Via Body Camerashttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/533166/researchers-will-study-police-confrontations-via-body-cameras/
<p>UCLA scholars will analyze raw video and audio feeds to glean insights into effective policing.</p>
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<img src="http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/body.camx299.jpg" width="299" height="299" alt="" /> </aside>
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<p >Some police are now using wearable cameras to record interactions with the public. The one shown here was made by a company called Vievu. </p>
</aside>
<p>As more police are equipped with cameras on their bodies to capture footage of interactions with the public, a group of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been given permission to study video and audio streams from one police department to learn how best to prevent confrontations from escalating.</p>
<p>Police body-cams have been proposed as ways to resolve allegations of needless use of force following the police shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, and the death of a New York City man during his arrest for selling cigarettes illegally.</p>
<p>The White House last week <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/01/fact-sheet-strengthening-community-policing" target="0">pledged</a> $75 million that police departments could use to buy 50,000 body cameras as a way to help “build and sustain trust” among civilians. But whether or not cameras will resolve disputes or improve trust, they could at least provide a wider window into how policing works.</p>
<p>The UCLA researchers will collect footage from between 50 and 100 officers next year. The police agency involved has not been disclosed, but police have started using such cameras in many cities, including Los Angeles.</p>
<p>One goal, says <a href="http://paleo.sscnet.ucla.edu/" target="0">Jeff Brantingham</a>, an anthropologist at UCLA who is leading the work, is to see whether software might help detect when encounters with members of the public escalate but are then calmed by a police officer.</p>
<p>“While we focus attention on things that escalated all the way to extreme outcomes, we know a lot less about other events,” Brantingham says. “Things that went down a dangerous path and ended up being okay. Why did it end up that way? That would provide a huge benefit in terms of training.”</p>
<p>Brantingham, who previously cofounded PredPol (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532471/data-toting-cops/" target="0">Data-Toting Cops</a>”), a startup that predicts where crimes are likely to occur, is collaborating on the body-cam project with <a href="http://www.math.ucla.edu/~bertozzi/" target="0">Andrea Bertozzi</a>, a mathematician at UCLA.</p>
<p>Starting in January, the researchers will try using software to help categorize police work into tasks such as talking with citizens, walking, driving, and going into buildings.</p>
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<p>Automating the analysis of body-worn video footage will be challenging, says Song-Chun Zhu, an expert on computer vision at UCLA who is not involved in the project. While a stationary camera can detect changes in its field of view, the field of view of a camera worn on the body is constantly changing, making it harder to automatically identify objects or scenes. Nighttime lighting can make matters more difficult, and such video does not show the actual police officer, though his or her hands are visible in some cases.</p>
<p>Another factor is that officers can shut off the video at their discretion, although this in itself can be revealing. “That actually is useful information to get an idea of what is driving that decision,” Brantingham says.</p>
<p>Past studies have found that the presence of cameras is associated with moderation of behavior. A <a href="http://www.policefoundation.org/content/body-worn-camera" target="0">study</a> done in Rialto, California, for example, found camera use correlated with fewer complaints against police. </p>
Thu, 11 Dec 2014 22:25:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533166/researchers-will-study-police-confrontations-via-body-cameras/Artificial Skin That Senses, and Stretches, Like the Real Thinghttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/533106/artificial-skin-that-senses-and-stretches-like-the-real-thing/
<p>South Korean and U.S. researchers have developed a stretchable material that senses touch, pressure, and moisture, and could be used to give artificial limbs feeling.</p>
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<p >This electronics-laden glove is made up of layers of materials with stretchable gold and silicon sensors.</p>
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<p>Some high-tech prosthetic limbs can be controlled by their owners, using nerves, muscles, or even the brain. However, there’s no way for the wearer to tell if an object is scalding hot, or about to slip out of the appendage’s grasp.</p>
<p>Materials that detect heat, pressure, and moisture could help change this by adding sensory capabilities to prosthetics. A group of Korean and U.S. researchers have now developed a polymer designed to mimic the elastic and high-resolution sensory capabilities of real skin.</p>
<p>The polymer is infused with dense networks of sensors made of ultrathin gold and silicon. The normally brittle silicon is configured in serpentine shapes that can elongate to allow for stretchability. Details of the work are published today in the journal <em>Nature Communications</em>.</p>
<p>Stretchable sensing materials have been in development for years (see “<a href="http://www2.technologyreview.com/article/405528/stretchable-silicon/" target="0">Stretchable Silicon</a>” and “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/demo/428944/making-stretchable-electronics/" target="0">Making Stretchable Electronics</a>”). But this is the most sensitive material yet, with as many as 400 sensors per square millimeter.</p>
<p>“If you have these sensors at high resolution across the finger, you can give the same tactile touch that the normal hand would convey to the brain,” says <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2013/pioneer/roozbeh-ghaffari/" target="0">Roozbeh Ghaffari</a>, who contributed to the research and heads advanced technology development at <a href="http://www.mc10inc.com/" target="0">MC10</a>, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, developing wearable products based on flexible, sensor-laden materials.</p>
<p>What’s more, the researchers tuned the sensors to have the right stretching ranges depending where on a hand they’d be located. They used motion-capture cameras to study how a real hand moves and stretches, and then applied varying silicon shapes to different spots on the prosthetic skin to accommodate that stretchability.</p>
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<img src="http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/stretchable.2x519.jpg" width="519" height="346" alt="" /> <p >A piece of the prototype smart skin with integrated sensors is shown being stretched by 20 percent.</p>
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<p>Finally, in a further effort to make the materials seem more realistic, they added a layer of actuators that warm it up to roughly the same temperature as human skin.</p>
<p>The new smart skin addresses just one part of the challenge in adding sensation to prosthetic devices. The larger problem is creating durable and robust connections to the human nervous system, so that the wearer can actually “feel” what’s being sensed.</p>
<p>In a crude demonstration of such an interface, Dae-Hyeong Kim, who led the project at Seoul National University, connected the smart skin to a rat’s brain and was able to measure reactions in the animal’s sensory cortex to sensory input. This did not, however, show whether, or to what extent, the rat was feeling heat, pressure, or moisture. “To tell the exact kinds of feeling,” Kim says, “we need to move onto larger animals, which would be our future work.”</p>
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<p>There remains a big gap between what the new materials can do and what existing interfaces can actually convey to the human brain, says <a href="https://bme.case.edu/FacultyStaff/PrimaryFaculty/Tyler/" target="0">Dustin Tyler</a>, a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University, and an expert in neural interfaces. “This proof-of-concept demonstration is interesting, but there is a lot of hard work that remains to show the robustness and performance necessary to translate this device to usable prosthetic hands,” he says.</p>
<p>Only recently has an interface capable of restoring sensation been demonstrated in a human, when Tyler and colleagues equipped a Cleveland-area man who lost his hand with such a system (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/photoessay/524676/an-artificial-hand-with-real-feeling/" target="0">An Artificial Hand with Real Feeling</a>”). The man could control the hand using a muscle interface, and some 20 sensors on the prosthetic hand relayed sensory information back to him through the electrode attached to a nerve in his arm stump. This allowed him to know if he’d picked up something soft like a cherry and to stop himself from crushing the fruit. </p>Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533106/artificial-skin-that-senses-and-stretches-like-the-real-thing/Discarded Laptop Batteries Keep the Lights Onhttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/532896/discarded-laptop-batteries-keep-the-lights-on/
<p>Millions of batteries discarded with computers have more than enough life to power home lighting for one year, researchers in India say.</p>
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<p >A street vendor in India uses a light powered by refurbished battery cells. </p>
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<p>Many of the estimated 50 million lithium-ion laptop batteries discarded every year could provide electricity storage sufficient to light homes in poor countries, researchers at IBM say.</p>
<p>In work being aired this week at a <a href="http://acmdev.org/" target="0">conference</a> in San Jose, researchers at IBM Research India in Bangalore found that at least 70 percent of all discarded batteries have enough life left to power an LED light at least four hours a day for a year.</p>
<p>While it’s possible to combine LED lights with solar panels and rechargeable batteries (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2013/humanitarian/evans-wadongo/" target="0">Innovators Under 35: Evans Wadongo</a>”), using discarded batteries could make the approach far cheaper.</p>
<p>“The most costly component in these systems is often the battery,” says Vikas Chandan, a research scientist at the lab’s Smarter Energy Group, who led the <a href="http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mjain/UrJar-DEV-2014.pdf" target="0">project</a>. “In this case, the most expensive part of your storage solution is coming from trash.”</p>
<p>The IBM group, working with a hardware R&amp;D firm called RadioStudio, tore open discarded laptop battery packaging and extracted individual storage units called cells, tested those individually to pick out the good ones, and recombined them to form refurbished battery packs. Then, after adding charging dongles as well as circuitry to prevent overheating, they gave them to five users in Bangalore who lived in slums or operated sidewalk carts.</p>
<p>Three months later, the users said the battery packs had worked well; the main request was for rat-resistant wires and brighter bulbs, says Mohit Jain, a research engineer with the group. A revised setup is now being tested.</p>
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<p>Around 50 million laptop and desktop computers are discarded in the United States every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, in India alone, about 400 million people lack grid-connected electricity.</p>
<p>IBM is not considering this as a business but says the technology could be offered free to poor countries. </p>
<!-- embed: static: 533386-->Wed, 03 Dec 2014 22:15:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532896/discarded-laptop-batteries-keep-the-lights-on/Cheap Oil Could Kill Off Cellulosic Ethanolhttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/532956/cheap-oil-could-kill-off-cellulosic-ethanol/
<p>Inexpensive oil could increase the pressure to reduce mandates for biofuels.</p>
<p>The plunge in oil prices, accelerated by a recent OPEC decision to maintain production targets, will deal a new blow to efforts to commercialize advanced biofuels such as ethanol made from woody plant waste, or diesel made from plant oils. Lower oil prices may also help strengthen the case for scaling back the federal regulations requiring the use of biofuels.</p>
<p>Progress in commercializing advanced biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol has been slow despite federal rules mandating the use of such fuels. Earlier this year a few large-scale cellulosic ethanol plants, including ones operated by <a href="http://www.poetdsm.com/" target="0">Poet-DSM</a>, <a href="http://biofuels.dupont.com/cellulosic-ethanol/nevada-site-ce-facility/" target="0">DuPont</a>, and <a href="http://www.abengoabioenergy.com/web/en/2g_hugoton_project/" target="0">Abengoa</a>, became operational. All were planned when oil was above $100 a barrel. A number of other projects were canceled even before the recent oil price plunge.</p>
<p>Now that oil is below $70 a barrel, down from a high of $115 earlier this year, new plants simply won’t get built, says <a href="https://www2.ag.purdue.edu/agecon/Pages/Profile.aspx?strAlias=wtyner&amp;intDirDeptID=4" target="0">Wallace Tyner</a>, an agriculture and energy economist at Purdue University.</p>
<p>Federal biofuel mandates were created with an energy bill passed by the U.S. government in in 2005. Signed into law by President Bush, the standards were meant to promote energy independence, requiring ever-increasing numerical gallon requirements for the use of ethanol and advanced biofuels in transportation fuels.</p>
<p>In 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration scaled back requirements for the total volume of biofuels that must be added to transportation fuels. The EPA cited market saturation due to lower-than-expected demand for gasoline, limiting the amount of ethanol that can be blended (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/521786/oil-companies-happy-biofuels-companies-distraught-over-new-epa-rules/" target="0">Oil Companies Happy, Biofuels Companies Distraught Over New EPA Rules</a>”).</p>
<p>Updated requirements are expected from the EPA early next year. If the mandates are repealed, says Tyner, “then cellulosic biofuels and biodiesel would cease to exist.”</p>
<p>Cheap oil’s effects elsewhere in clean-tech are likely to be more limited. “Very little oil is used in the production of electric power, so the plunge in oil prices primarily impacts the transportation sector,” says Massoud Amin, director of the <a href="http://tli.umn.edu/" target="0">Technological Leadership Institute</a> at the University of Minnesota, and a former executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility-funded research group.</p>
Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532956/cheap-oil-could-kill-off-cellulosic-ethanol/Fidelity’s Oculus App Lets You Fly Through Your Investmentshttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/532676/fidelitys-oculus-app-lets-you-fly-through-your-investments/
<p>Brokerage giant Fidelity gives a glimpse of how virtual reality might be used beyond gaming.</p>
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<img src="http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/fidelity.oculusx299.jpg" width="299" height="299" alt="" /> </aside>
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<p >The color on top of buildings indicates whether a stock has risen or fallen in value. </p>
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<p>Hedging the possibility that <a href="http://www.oculus.com/" target="0">Oculus Rift</a>’s immersive goggles might someday become useful beyond video games, Fidelity Investments has mocked up a way for you to don the clunky eyewear and fly through your money.</p>
<p>In Fidelity’s prototype virtual environment—which it says is the first financial services app written for Oculus—stocks are represented as office towers and lumped together in sector “neighborhoods.” The buildings’ footprints are shaped by trading volume and their rooftops are red or green depending on changes in price.</p>
<p>Fidelity is not claiming to have solved any actual problems with the app. But with $2 trillion under management, it wants to get ahead of how new interfaces might be used. “We have a hypothesis that virtual reality will take off in the consumer set in the next three to five years, so therefore we want to understand the technology,” says Hadley Stern, vice president at <a href="https://www.fidelitylabs.com/" target="0">Fidelity Labs</a>, a research wing of the brokerage company. “We want to get their feedback on this and start to think: how would active traders and other investors use virtual worlds to understand data?”</p>
<p>The company is unveiling the app, called StockCity, this week at a <a href="http://www.moneyshow.com/tradeshow/las_vegas/traders_expo/" target="0">trade show for stock traders</a> in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>Oculus, bought by Facebook earlier this year for $2 billion (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies: <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/526531/oculus-rift/" target="0">Oculus Rift</a>”), allows wearers to inhabit 3-D worlds. Their head motions translate into different views of scenes. Stern says it’s possible that an Oculus visualization would help traders make decisions or see opportunities based on pricing or trading fluctuations.</p>
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<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/fidelity.oculusx1222.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/fidelity.oculusx519.jpg" alt="" width="" height="" hspace="15" vspace="15" /></a>
<p>Within Fidelity’s prototype Oculus app, buildings change height and shape as they represent stocks and trading volumes.
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<p>In Fidelity’s prototype app, there are some other heavy-handed metaphors: when the market’s open, it appears to be daytime in the virtual city; when the market is closed, it’s night. Sunshine or rain indicates the general direction of the market. No word yet on what kind of weather graphics would have been used during the last financial crisis, but Stern joked: “Tornadoes?”</p>
<p>An initial experience wasn’t all that exciting. Donning the heavy googles and feeling slightly disoriented, I hoped to fly through my own 401(k) and get a sense of how bad my various decisions had been over the years.</p>
<p>But for now, Fidelity isn’t letting anyone access actual brokerage accounts until it works out security and user-authentication protocols for goggle-wearers. So all I could do was zoom around a generic downtown portraying the movement of various blue-chip stocks.</p>
<p>The company has done similar experiments with <a href="https://fidelitylabs.com/content/fidelity-market-monitor-glass" target="0">Google Glass</a> and the <a href="https://fidelitylabs.com/content/fidelity-watchapp-pebble-its-time" target="0">Pebble</a> smart watch. If the app ever takes off, Stern says, traffic in the virtual streets could represent trading activity, or blue Twitter birds around buildings could indicate social media chatter.</p>
Wed, 19 Nov 2014 16:15:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532676/fidelitys-oculus-app-lets-you-fly-through-your-investments/Climate Panel Issues Dire Report as Renewables Make Little Impacthttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/532251/climate-panel-issues-dire-report-as-renewables-make-little-impact/
<p>Latest synthesis report from U.N. panel says we’ve already emitted half the permissible greenhouse gases if we wish to avoid the worst.</p>
<!--smart_paging_filter--><p>The latest comprehensive global scientific assessment of climate change, released on Sunday, sounds the direst warning yet about the need to drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. But despite years of such reports, fossil-fuel use and human-caused emissions continue to rise, and renewable energy technologies have so far failed to make a significant difference.</p>
<p>The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-convened panel of the world’s scientific community, estimates that in order to have a 66 percent chance of limiting total average warming to less than 2 °C relative to preindustrial levels—a goal widely seen as a threshold beyond which severe changes are far more likely—the world’s human population can emit no more than one trillion tons of carbon dioxide, and that we’ve already emitted more than half that much.</p>
<p>Avoiding going over one trillion tons would mean reducing greenhouse-gas emissions 40 to 70 percent by 2050 and slashing them to almost zero by 2100, the report estimates. <span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p>
<p>Such estimates were first made in 2009 (see this <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08017.html" target="_blank"><em>Nature</em> paper</a>) without prompting much in the way of policy changes to reduce emissions. But this is the first time the IPCC has embraced the concept of a global carbon budget in one of its comprehensive sets of assessments, which the panel issues every few years. On Sunday, the IPCC released the <a href="http://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/SYR_AR5_SPM.pdf" target="_blank">synthesis</a> of the fifth set of such reports since 1990.</p>
<p>The task ahead is now far clearer for countries that have signed on to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), says Myles Allen, lead author of the 2009 paper, who heads climate research at the <span style="line-height: 20.0063037872314px;"><a href="http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Environmental Change Institute</a> of the </span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">University of Oxford’s </span><span style="line-height: 20.0063037872314px;">School of Geography and the Environment</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">. These nations will meet for the next round of climate talks in Paris in late 2015.</span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"> </span></p>
<p>With the IPCC having reviewed and endorsed the idea of a carbon budget, nations “haven’t got any excuse to ignore it now,” he says. “It’s not for the IPCC to recommend policy, but speaking personally, I very much hope [the countries] will now acknowledge the fact that their two-degree goal implies a cumulative limit on carbon emissions. And it is a limit we are rapidly approaching.”</p>
<p>At current rates, the “budget” would be spent in just 30 years. Reducing emissions below the threshold is a monumental task. It would require large-scale burial of carbon dioxide from many hundreds of existing coal power plants—but this effort has barely begun (see “<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531531/carbon-sequestration-too-little-too-late/" target="_blank">Carbon Sequestration: Too Little, Too Late?</a>”). In addition, it would require almost quadrupling the present supply of renewable energy and nuclear energy, the report estimates, as well as other vast efforts, including stopping deforestation and making widespread changes to agriculture practices.</p>
<p>And yet emissions keep rising. As one example, coal power plants already produce more than 14 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year (that’s about four billion tons of carbon) and are becoming more numerous.</p>
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<p>If we continue on the current path, heat-trapping gases will build up to produce a surge in average global temperatures of 3.7 °C to 4.8 °C by 2100. The result will be a dangerous rise in sea levels, more profound droughts and heat waves (greatly stressing world water and food supplies), and more powerful storms and floods.</p>
<p>The idea of a carbon budget could clarify matters for governments, says Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. “This concept might prove useful at the negotiating table, as it changes the question from one of annualized emissions of individual nations,” he says. “Negotiations could then focus on how to divide that budget amongst individual countries.”</p>
<p>The IPCC says it is at least 95 percent certain that human activities, led by the burning of fossil fuels, are the main cause of the climate change seen since 1950, up from 90 percent in the previous assessment in 2007 and 66 percent in 2002. Its report is based on 30,000 scientific papers studied by about 830 authors and 2,000 reviewers.</p>Mon, 03 Nov 2014 23:05:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532251/climate-panel-issues-dire-report-as-renewables-make-little-impact/Computers Could Talk Themselves into Giving Up Secretshttp://www.technologyreview.com/news/532121/computers-could-talk-themselves-into-giving-up-secrets/
<p>Malware might use a voice synthesizer to bypass some security controllers, researchers say.</p>
<!--smart_paging_filter--><p>Voice-control features designed to make PCs and smartphones easier to use, especially for people with disabilities, may also provide ways for hackers to bypass security protections and access the data stored on those devices.</p>
<p>Accessibility features are there for a good reason—they make it possible to control what’s happening on the graphical user interface without typing. But if they aren’t designed carefully, these features can be abused.</p>
<p>Researchers at Georgia Tech found that they could sidestep security protocols by using voice controls to enter text or click buttons. In a paper on the work, the researchers describe 12 ways to attack phones with Android, iOS, Windows, or Ubuntu Linux operating systems, including some that would not require physical access to the device. The paper will be presented next week at the CCS’14 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.</p>
<p>One attack showed how a piece of malware could use Windows Speech Recognition to talk its way into running commands that normally require a higher level of privilege, demonstrated on a laptop <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZrzSRhyKBM" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>Another demonstration showed how malware could attack a smartphone. It exploits the fact that Google Now, a voice-controlled assistant that comes with the Android operating system, can use a voiceprint in lieu of a typed passcode. The researchers show how an attacker might record the authentication phrase on a Moto X phone, and then use a generic text-to-speech program to issue other commands as if it were the user. The attack is shown <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5zjJgGSUw4" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>“This is an important wake-up call for major OS vendors: Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux community,” says <a href="http://digitalpiglet.org/" target="_blank">Radu Sion</a>, director of the National Security Institute at Stony Brook University.</p>
<p>Wenke Lee, the Georgia Tech computer scientist who led the work, says the problems appear to be the result of incorporating speech recognition and other features into phones late in the development cycle.</p>
<p>“I think there are fundamental issues here that are hard to fix,” says Lee. “These features were added after the OS had been implemented, so these features don’t have the same kinds of security checks.”</p>
<p>Hackers could exploit the vulnerabilities remotely to initiate or escalate an attack on a device, Lee says. Although a phone that starts speaking to itself could be fairly obvious to the user, a malicious app could keep track of motion data and wait until the phone was not moving for a long period, indicating that the user was probably not nearby, Lee says.</p>Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:00:00 +0000http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532121/computers-could-talk-themselves-into-giving-up-secrets/